This article is a study focusing on an important area of appliances we inevitably use almost daily and which has a tendency of renewal, diversification and quality improvement – that is the television set. There is a discrepancy between the quality of the products on the market and the one...

The paper studies a method for evaluating current literature that receives little consideration in research and development. Various types of undervalued studies are recognized, and how they are related to a systematic review is shown. A diagram is presented that illustrates scoping studies...

Based on a sample of 946 German insurance intermediaries, the factors that affect the quality of the information services provided by them are studied using OLS-estimations. Applying a search theoretical approach, we analyze the impact of supply and demand side variables on service quality....

Insurance products are distributed both by independent and dependent agents, although the use of independent agents is more costly. The product quality hypothesis states that independent agents provide both insurers and customers with higher service quality and therefore, remain on the market....

Insurance intermediation services are information services which exhibit strong information asymmetries. We empirically analyze whether signaling works in the German market for insurance intermediation services. For this a signal must increase service quality and be easily identifiable by...

We study the effects of horizontal mergers when firms compete on quality and price. Two key factors are identified: (i) the magnitude of variable quality costs, and (ii) the relative magnitudes of cross-quality and cross-price effects on demand. The merging firms will increase (reduce) both...

This papers studies the effects on service quality and consumer surplus of a minimum price which is fixed by a bureaucratic non-monopolistic professional association. It shows that the price set by a Niskanen-type professional assocation will maximize consumer surplus only if consumers demand...

This paper uses a quality disclosure policy, the Nursing Home Quality Initiative, which mandates the public reporting of quality information on selected dimensions, to investigate how nonprofit nursing homes react to economic incentives. I find that nonprofits are as responsive as for-profits to...

The main role of the external auditor in the classical corporate governance scheme is to verify the accounting information provided by the firms’ managers. Lengthy audit engagements are viewed as a main threat to preserve auditor independence, and therefore regulators have established...

In recent years, several countries have introduced non-monetary performance incentives for health care providers to improve the quality of medical care. Evidence on the effect of non-monetary feedback incentives, predominantly in the form of public quality reporting, on the quality of medical...